iPhone Basics: Managing Notifications

Lesson 12: Managing Notifications

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Managing notifications

Notifications alert you to many things on your iPhone, including incoming messages, new emails, and calendar events. Notifications work slightly differently for each app, but they're easy to customize. In this lesson, we'll show you how to modify the Notification Center and choose which apps will appear there.

The Notification Center

The Notification Center keeps all of your notifications in one place. Simply swipe down from the top of the screen to open it at any time, even from the lock screen.

By default, the Notification Center shows you your Recent alerts, starting with the newest ones at the top. From the Recent notifications screen, you can swipe right to access notifications for Today. This includes any events on your calendar, top new stories, weather, and more.

Clearing notifications

Notifications will remain in the Notification Center until they are dismissed, or cleared. To clear a notification, tap the X, then press Clear.

Notifications cannot be cleared from the Today view.

Customizing the Notification Center

It's easy to customize the Notification Center to suit your needs. For example, you can turn certain views on and off and choose which apps to include in the Notification Center. You can also customize other notifications for individual apps, like sounds and badges.

To customize the Notification Center:

Tap the Settings icon on your Home screen.
Tap Notifications.
From here, you can customize which apps will appear in the Notification Center. Tap the app you'd like to customize. In our example, we'll choose the App Store.
From here, you can deselect Notification Center to choose whether you'd like notifications from this app to appear in the Notification Center.
This app's notifications will no longer appear in the Notification Center. There are several other available options, which are covered in the interactive below.